Saturday, 8 September 2018

My First Lesson for Y9+ - Teaching Note Taking

Seating plan, alphabetically by first name to start with so I get to know names ASAP. Books given out, 10 short rules copied down on the back page.

Students to use a ruler and create a box at the bottom of each page in their exercise books, 4 lines in size. They do this for 25 pages.

On the first five pages, they write CUE COLUMN at the top of the margin, and SUMMARY in the bottom box.

I briefly explain Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve. I then tell them we will be using the Cornell Note Taking system and detail why I think it is the best way to organise their exercise books.

They are then told the CUE COLUMN is for any key words, names, dates, places - or questions that come to mind. This is be completed at least 24 hours after the lesson - except questions, they can be written in the lesson.

Next, I inform them that weekly, they will complete the summary boxes and that each page will be summarised with 2 or 3 bullet points.

We then look at the testing effect - and how that will help them actually securely learn the information.

I then show them how to use their new note setup to do that - covering main notes, just leaving cues etc. We practice using cues to write short questions.

I ensure they know to date and title each piece of work. Date so they add further dates for cue, summary, test and review. Title so information is easy to find.

We then get started learning things...

And the next lesson we begin with a brief test.

(I used to only do this with 6th form, and blogged about that <here> - includes Cornell Slides)